J.E.Lawrie HINTS-17. v2 Plain Text When is a Pipedream file in "plain text" and why ? It ought to be possible to find the answers in the User Manual and/or in the various books on the Z88 but I've not seen it - bits of this and that; pretty useless. "Why" is the easiest to explain. Usually, Pipedream files are not in plain text otherwise we couldn't retrieve the margin, the page length, column widths, etc and spreadsheets would be impossible. "When"? Well, when we choose to make it so or when the operating system dictates it. Plain text. When a Pipedream file is saved there is the option to select it as "plain text" - we enter "Y" at the last option if we want it so. If such a file is retrieved from RAM it has to be loaded as plain text otherwise we only get 12 characters on each line. We can alter the Options to see the whole text but column widths, etc are as we would find in a new instantiation of a Pipedream file. These files are always saved as plain text - a) all CLI files. b) list files, those special files ending with .L c) files which will be transferred to another computer d) files we create in Pipedream to be accessed by Basic. There are two instances of plain text files created internally - e) data files created from within a Basic program, and f) the S.sgn files originating in :RAM.- 256k EPROM problems It is only recently that I bought a 256k EPROM, only because it was cheap I must add! My first problem was that it would not take more than 50k of files. Several erasures later (!) I got 156k on it before it baulked BUT some files it just would not accept. These files had nothing in common and were not exceptional in any way, I also found that when a file was repeated there were now TWO, and I could, in experimenting, get three and four instances of a file. The supplier was only too happy to replace it - in fact, he sent the "duff" one back as well! But the new one was no better than the first - what to do? The obvious thing was to talk to someone who knows a lot more than me about the Z88 - Vic Gerhardi of Rakewell. He was surprised that I didn't know of the Z88/256k EPROM "bug"- he thought everyone knew that it behaved in a peculiar fashion, even causing hard resets. He believes, though not too certain that the OZ4 version of the Z88 is O.K. with this EPROM. A write-up I have on the "bugs" cured by the OZ4 chip does not mention this one at all So, if you have, or get a 256k EPROM take care! Don't try and put more than 150k of files into it for a start, and try not to save the same filename a second time - call it something else. And, the "bug" I did know about - don't save a file larger than 64k to it. END Back to HINTS-INDEX